Japanese sales: Watch Dogs hits Japan, Mario Kart slips

Another week has passed and Media Create have released their sales data for Japan. Japan had an interesting release week with several new titles for both handheld and console, so previous contenders are starting to slip from the charts. The biggest takeaway from this week is that first week sales in Japan are highly important and after that, it begins to trail off.

The top six games this week are all new to the charts, with Freedom Wars for PS Vita managing to claim the top spot. Second place goes to Watch Dogs for the PS4, which managed to sell just under half of what Freedom Wars sold, proving that handhelds do reign supreme in Japan. After that, the PS3 saw the release of Kamen Rider: Battride War II, the 3DS got Taiko Drum Master: Don and Katsu’s Space-Time Great Adventure, and the PS3 version of Watch Dogs hits the charts at six.

At seven Yokai Watch continues its stranglehold on Japan, while Mario Kart 8 slips to eighth spot. It’ll be interesting to see if these two games manage to reclaim spots near the top of the chart next week, as newcomers might slip faster than games that have a long-tail, as we’ve seen with Yokai Watch reclaiming spots in the chart for weeks now.

Around the web

Never played it? It’s boring in single player mode, but get 4 friends and OH MAN, it’s a free-for-all

Thomas Vienna

That picture must have been taken at launch.

XiC

And they were as indicated by the two promos on the bottom left. It’s very much like WiiUDaily to do such a thing.

Michael Ocampo

…Off-topic?

https://twitter.com/Zorpix_Fang Zorpix

care to explain?

tom

mario kart 8 has been out for over a month, of course its gonna slip. I really don’t think Watch Dogs will perform too well in Japan.

Nothing5555

With Watch Dogs delayed for the Wii U, I really hope Ubisoft does enough enhancements to make it worth the wait.

Ducked

Looks like the Wii U is going to be the leading home console in Japan until the PlayStation 4 can actually get some games to appeal to Japan. I’m curious to see how Xbox One will do when it launches in September.

Daniel Gonzalez

For now, yeah. PS4 probably won’t have any real sales boosts until 2015.

Ducked

I agree. Deep Down and Final Fantasy XV looks to be the system sellers.

Jon Turner

And even then, one of those two titles could STILL hit WiiU.

Daniel Gonzalez

I can see KH3 possibly hitting the Wii U, but the ones that Ducked listed, are unlikely to happen.

Jon Turner

KH3 has the most chances of hitting WiiU, since that game isn’t going tone around for awhile. I don’t know much about Deep Down and I’m less hopeful about FFXV, but should the latter hit WiiU? Absolutely. Last I heard that games is not even SUPPOSED to be ready until 2016. So… who knows.

Daniel Gonzalez

KH3 is about the only one that fits the bill of the three. There’s no release date yet, so there’s time for a Wii U port. I can’t say for certain that FFXV won’t hit the Wii U, but history has repeated itself enough that it’s probably going to stay on PS4 and Xbox One. To be fair, I’d rather it be on Wii U than XBox One, as the Xbox brand doesn’t really fit into its history.

Jon Turner

Agreed. Although I think the cycle SHOULD be broken someday. IIRC, SE DID experiment with putting FFXIII on Wii, but due to technical difficulties (and remember, Wii was WAAAAY behind PS3 and XB360; not so with WiiU in terms of PS4/XB1) it wasn’t. Oddly, I even heard a whispering from a GameFAQS guy that they were considering bringing the FFXIII games to WiiU! Apparantly SE isn’t uninterested in WiiU, they just want to see its user base improve, at least from the tone of the GameFAQs guy.

http://ejercitogeek.net/ Mercurio2054

“as the Xbox brand doesn’t really fit into its history.”
i think that you say everything here.

Ducked

Deep Down is a PS4 exclusive, so I don’t think it’s going multiplat. Kingdom Hearts III has the JRPG and Disney crowd, so it would make perfect sense to release it on Wii U.

Daniel Gonzalez

Agreed. That and the game isn’t that hardware demanding if you know what I mean. So if Square Enix decides to port it, it won’t be too difficult, or at all.

Ducked

I don’t think it be very hard at all to port it to Wii U. Giving the game will be running on the Kingdom Shader, however in size could be a different story. I think the only reason they were silent on releasing it on Wii U is because they revealed it when Wii U gloom and doom was going on. I’m sure they were afraid to bring it to a system with a small, dead install base.

Jon Turner

And now the install base is slowly but gradually up ticking.

Ducked

And when Super Smash Bros releases, sales should be at its highest. I’m confident sales will reach 10 million by the end if the year, thanks to Super Smash and Mario Kart 8.

Jon Turner

Hopefully. Although the users on IGN forums are thinking its hopeless for WiiU to ever improve; they’ve been reading VGChartz numbers lately, but on the other hand, VGC are HARDLY accurate, so what are we whining about?

Ducked

IGN has a terrible community. I like IGN and there reviews, but don’t pay any mind to there forums or comment section. And yes, vgchartz is not accurate.

Jon Turner

Yeah, I quite going there long ago. I’m so disgusted with them.

greengecko007

Exactly. I go to IGN for news, reviewers, and podcasts, but their comment section is a lost cause in all the communities.

FutureFox

FFXV will release on the PS5 and DotBoxTwo. Honest. : )

Jon Turner

Again, we don’t really know that.

jlenoconel

If FFXV were released for the Wii U, I’d have absolutely no reason to buy a PS4. I hope it happens.

Ducked

I hope it happens as well.

Jason

Very poorly, considering the Wii U already outsold the 360’s lifetime sales. there

Ducked

Well Scalebound could boost some interest, and pre-orders have actually been decent

Jon Turner

It’ll probably do just as well as the other XBox systems did. Which isn’t saying much. At all.

http://www.gengame.net/ Guesty Pooh!

It’s actually very smart of MS to call it the Xbox one, as that will be about the number of consoles they’ll most likely sell in Japan.

I joke, they might hit double figures.

I kid, maybe they will surprise us all and be the number one console, hence the name, Xbox One.

Naaaah.
Good luck to them, they’ll need it.

gerb1977

Seems like Wii U is settling in around 10K a week now. It will be interesting to

see what Hyrule Warriors and Bayonnetta do to the hardware sales in Japan when they release in the next few months. If X is released in 2014 as is listed for Japan then we may see a nice amount of hardware sales between now and the end of December.

jjbredesen

Not much new, think that this is how it will stay for a while, until the next major Wii U game, i think its Hyrule Warriors?? Will stay around 7-10K

greengecko007

That’s to be expected, although it nearly has half a million sales after just a month, which is awesome for a home console game in Japan. Hopefully sales will stay in the 10K range until Hyrule Warriors releases next month for them.

MARIO’SMOUSTACH

Microsoft in Japan:

WolfgangAmadeusMozart

Your gif isn’t working, but I know where this is going.

MARIO’SMOUSTACH

Too bad, it is a classic

Darkness

Many of my Japanese friends are not getting Mario Kart 8 due to all the flaws with the game, especially since they ruined battle mode!

Japanese no’s for console is nothing to write home about overall these days. As handhelds of course are the preferred gaming method in no’s. But it seems most systems are holding steady.
Wii U has been around the 10+k mark since after Kart and that’s quite an improvement over the 2-3k figures, since SM3DW late last year. It had a small boost during DKCTF if I remember correctly. But a small software drought from Feb to June had the system consistently selling at under 5k.
Should see a decent boost in Japan when Hyrule Warriors releases. There’s a lot of exposure on that one title and it seems the Japanese like what they see. Should be interesting…

Gary Ryckewaert

Funny how the Wii U has been outselling the PS4 lately, yet there are few articles discussing this. When the Wii U was having a hard time I would see articles on a daily basis. I live in the U.S. so that may be part of it because the PS4 is the top selling console here. After all the talk and debate about the Wii U I hope it ends up selling well over the next couple years because it really is a good console and I love the gamepad.

oontz

“Funny how the Wii U has been outselling the PS4 lately”

It’s not that funny, rather expected seeing as mariokart is one of nintendo’s flagship IPs. But it’s fair to note that it’s only outselling the ps4 in japan. Sony clearly has the other regions, for now. In the end all that really matters is that you enjoy games on what ever platform you own. That’s the whole point right?

jlenoconel

Because the industry is full of assholes who were probably paid to write Nintendo off, that’s why. I also saw articles slamming Nintendo on a daily basis. Since launch I’ve intended to buy a Wii U, but didn’t because of money. Will buy in a few months though. Case in point is that I supported Nintendo even throughout their struggle, and knew that some of these other a-holes were trying their best to bring about Nintendo’s downfall.

oontz

It’s intersting that this article is sitting at around 45 comments. It seems many wiiudaily hardcore Nintendo fanboy regulars don’t like to actually discuss things when Nintendo is doing just okay. You need to take the good with the bad, no?

Jim Peterson

Go Vita!

jlenoconel

I own the VITA and hate the thing since Sony announced they wouldn’t be releasing anymore triple A titles for it. What were they thinking saying that?

Commander Jim

I love it. I didn’t get it for AAA titles, I don’t play those types of games on a handheld. I prefer simpler indie type games, and the Vita gets tons of them.

jlenoconel

Who buys a VITA for indie games though? That makes absolutely NO sense. To be fair though, I don’t care for AAA titles on the VITA much either, but we should at least get most Japanese games localized over here, and we don’t even get that.